


and you know what they did? they danced

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, An Ode To Songfic, Exes, Explicit Language, F/M, Inspired by Hadestown, Non-Linear Narrative, Sexual Content, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:48:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27006862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: “Dear Rey,” he’d written a month before, whiskey on his tongue to keep him from turning coward, to keep him from believing it’s true what they say, I’ll be on my way, “I know I fucked up.  This isn’t to pretend I didn’t.  But I think you’d like this show.  The lighting is incredible.”  Two seats, orchestra, stage right for tonight.It had felt like a cop-out sort of a letter.Wait for me.  I’m coming.It was coming, he knew, much too late.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 29
Kudos: 251
Collections: To Rapture the Earth and the Seas: the 2020 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology





	and you know what they did? they danced

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the [2020 Reylo Fanfiction Anthology](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RFFAToRapturetheEarthandtheSeas>)! This year's pieces are truly stunning! You should check them out. 
> 
> A huge thanks to aionimica and bittersnake for editing this piece this year. Thanks to Jeeno2 for betaing it <3

“Don’t get too much in your head,” Bazine said without looking up from her phone. She’d cut her hair a few days before so that it sat just at her shoulders rather than swinging all the way down to her hips. Now it was the same length that Rey’s hair had been the first time he’d seen her. 

It made things easier.

It made things harder.

“I won’t,” he grunted, looking at himself in the makeup mirrors. 

It was always a wonder what makeup could do. The dark circles born of sleepless nights were gone. He looked younger than his thirty years, like a boy with a dream in his head and a song in his heart. 

He remembered the way that Rey smiled the first time he’d tucked a flower behind her ear and he watched as his face melted into youth and innocence even more.

“It still weirds me out that you can do that,” Bazine said. As far as he could tell, she still hadn’t looked up from her phone. 

“Do what?” he asks her. His voice is higher in his chest. _Why the fuck is he Orpheus and not Hades?_ was a question that had followed him from workshops even to now. _He played Phantom, didn’t he?_

 _Because I’m a baritone, not a bass two._ He could do vocal control up. He could falsetto fucking high. Years of practice and training had made his tenor range softer than it was when his voice first dropped. But it would never drop low enough for him to sing Hades. _Hey little songbird, give me a song_ was so much lower than anything he’d had to do as Phantom, which had already stretched his lower range to the point of breaking _._

_“How else do you expect to break onto Broadway? Baritones like you are a dime a dozen. Put this on your resume,” Palpatine smiled at him over the top of his brandy. It felt like the years were building up to that smile, however many drinks with his grandfather’s old agent, his future all in that one little smile. “It’s not the most exciting part, perhaps. Andrew Lloyd Weber is hardly the most exciting composer these days. But a touring production will set you apart.”_

“Look like you’re…” Bazine started before letting out a huff of annoyance and when Ben caught himself in the mirror next, he looked like he’d aged fifty years, the way he always did when he thought of the whispering in his ears that had broken everything. “Never mind.”

She got up from her seat and went out to the wings. 

“You’re not going to be able to tell who’s out there, Baz,” Lando called to her as she passed him, plucking at the feathers at his costume’s wrists. They’d gotten bent during the last show and costuming hadn’t gotten the chance to fix them yet. 

“Yeah, I know,” Bazine said. “I just don’t want to keep sitting. I want to pace.” 

_“I love the way the wind feels in my hair when I ride fast,”_ Rey had grinned at him, the sunshine glinting off the sweat on her face. 

_“You should still wear a helmet.”_

_“Don’t tell me what to do.”_

Ben swallowed.

She probably scalped the tickets. It would make sense. Rey was always short on cash, no matter what she did. As it turned out, the system wasn’t designed for people who didn’t have money to _get_ money. _It’s true what they say._

But no. Not there, not yet.

He couldn’t be at _if it’s true what they say_ just yet. He stretched his memory back further. Rey in the rain in a white t-shirt, not caring how see-through the cotton was getting by the second. Rey stepping into his arms, nuzzling her face in her neck and smelling so damn good. Rey replacing the wiring in his vacuum cleaner because she knew things about wires that he couldn’t begin to. Rey, the first time he’d crossed the threshold into her apartment, holding his breath. Rey with her surprised, derisive, _you can’t be serious_ when he’d blurted out for the first time that he wanted to take her to dinner even though he hadn’t ever spoken to her before.

_Come home with me?_

_(Who are you?)_

_The man who’s gonna marry you._

There he was, that boy in the mirror. Boy was the wrong word. He’d been in his mid-twenties still, though, a younger man than he was now. But he’d been hopeful, and had believed in good things. 

That was the person who’d had the idea to send her the tickets in the first place.

 _“Dear Rey,_ ” he’d written a month before, whiskey on his tongue to keep him from turning coward, to keep him from believing _it’s true what they say, I’ll be on my way_ , _“I know I fucked up. This isn’t to pretend I didn’t. But I think you’d like this show. The lighting is incredible.”_ Two seats, orchestra, stage right for tonight. 

It had felt like a cop-out sort of a letter. _Wait for me. I’m coming_. It was coming, he knew, much too late.

He’d be everything she wanted him to be. He could be. If he just had reason to hope…

She’d be out there. She’d come. He wouldn’t check like Baz was checking for the Tony viewers they knew were in the audience that night. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder just yet. 

Let those demons sneak into his mind a little bit later.

—

_This’ll be easy, he thought when he first saw Bazine Netal._

_She was the same size as Rey, had the same chestnut hair. But her smile wasn’t Rey’s smile, and her eyes weren’t Rey’s eyes. It was perfect—enough to remind him but not so much that he’d lose himself. Perfect for projecting._

_And he was right. He could close his eyes while dancing with her, while holding her close and she could be Rey in his arms, if he let himself believe it. He could feel his lips tickle upwards in a smile, in that,_ yes this is right, _feeling he’d had every time he’d held Rey. The sun was shining because, somehow, improbably, the sun always shone when he was with Rey. Her breath was warm against his cheek, and he could feel his own heart all the better for it echoed the pulsing way hers beat like a metronome, keeping them in time together. A time together._

_He didn’t have to wait for Hera Syndulla to tell him they’d done an excellent job. Of course, they had. He let himself believe Bazine was Rey and everything that was him and Rey—_

_It was lightning._

_It was sparklers._

_It was burning bright light against the dark, stopping your heart before it was gone._

_“Set design?” he asked, looking at the calluses on her palms. She’d actually said yes to dinner, once she’d gotten over the shock of a complete stranger—an actor—asking out of the blue._

_“Guess again,” Rey grinned, taking a swig of her beer again. Not an actor, not a set designer…_

_“Lights?” he asked and the smile widened—gleamed._

The darkest hour of the darkest night comes right before the—

_“The world is full of so much darkness, but you can’t really see what different kinds it is without light.” They were standing by the river, looking out over the water. The sky changed colors every three seconds, it seemed. It was one of those pre-storm evenings. In the distance, they could hear the rolling thunder, but they weren’t fleeing indoors like the rest of Manhattan._

_“That’s some pretentious shit,” he told her and she rolled her eyes._

_“You ever gotten really high and looked up through a tree’s branches? You start to notice the shadows are different. Some are darker than others. Some lights are brighter than others too—you just have to know how to look at them that way.”_

_“That doesn’t make sense,” he said again, but oh how he loved hearing her talk about it. He loved the way he felt his skin prickling whenever he touched her. He knew it was probably just static electricity, but it made him feel like magic really existed._

_“Actors,” she said, rolling her eyes._

_“Guilty as charged.”_

_Later, she would tell him that this was true of people as well as settings. Sometimes people were dark, sometimes they were light—and there were different shades of darknesses and lights depending on what their lives were like, and what they’d been through._

_“You smoke too much,” he’d told her fondly, picking at her belt loop a few inches above where her lighter lived in her pocket._

_“You could smoke more,” she said._

_“I sing,” he replied evenly._

_“I think it’d get you to loosen up.”_

_“Too much darkness in me,” he had said, trying to joke. “You’re too light and you don’t know what to do with it.”_

_“You think I’m light?” she had asked and there was a shade to her eyes he’d never seen before—sadness and something else._

_Simmered fury._

_“Lighter than me,” he said quietly._

_“Am I? I think you’re lighter than you think you are.”_

_This, even after what he’d told her about his uncle, even after she’d seen him get too drunk and punch a hole into a wall at a bar. This, even after she’d told him there was too much rage in his heart, too much numbness and yet also, somehow, not enough to keep the throbbing burning heat of it all at bay._

_“You smoke too much,” he told her again because he didn’t know how to see himself the way she saw him._

_It wasn’t until after she’d left him, when he was reading through the part that his agent shunted his way—keep it away from Palpatine, Poe said, don’t let him know we’re trying to poach you. Why me? I’m a dime a dozen, aren’t I?—that he began to wonder if maybe she was right._

—

It was harder than he wanted it to be, only letting a little bit of Rey in when he stepped on the stage that night. Ordinarily, he just needed to look at Bazine for a moment and let himself think _it’s not her, but it could be and that’s enough._

Not tonight though.

Tonight, he locked his eyes on Bazine and the first thought that floated through his mind was from the second act. 

_Where is she?_

_Where is she now?_

No—not yet. Not yet. They’re still singing about the sad song, he’s not living it yet.

Nothing exists beyond the stage, nothing but the lights. 

—

_The first time Rey took her top off, he sort of got it, the way the light and shadow illuminated and shaded the rise and fall of her breasts, the way her belly was curving inward as she slouched a little, as though nervous of what he’d think of her. Her eyes flitted around the dark room, landing anywhere but on him as he loosened his belt, his dick thick in his pants and swelling the more he noticed things like how her nipples were small, and puckering already just being out in the open._

_“We don’t have to do this,” he told her and that got her to look him in the face._

Do you let me walk with you?

I do

I do

I do

And keep on walking, come what will?

I will

I will

We will

 _It felt like a prayer, the moment his flesh touched hers. It felt like there was something sparking between their skins, every touch sending something through him he’d never felt before._ This, forever, _he thought, he promised with his tongue against hers._ This until I die, this, you, us.

_His breath trembled when she ran her fingers through his hair. His heart stuttered, the metronome faltered. What was the rhythm? What was the tempo of his heart and hers, of his hips and hers? What did it matter if they were alive and together and she made him feel the way the springtime sun made flowers grow?_

_Rey’s apartment was full of plants. They weren’t flowering plants, and it was the first time he really noticed that green could have so many different shades. Or maybe it was just that he was spending enough time with Rey to notice the shades between shades even in colors. Some of the plants were dying, over- or under-watered. Some were under lights that she kept on a timer to make sure they were getting the right amount. Some sat on her coffee table in little pots, plump and pink at the edges._

_“I was going to bring you flowers,” she told him when she met him at the stage door. “But I didn’t know what type of flowers you’d like.”_

_“Any flower you’d give me,” he told her._

_There’s a nectar between her legs, and he’d drink it down forever. Ambrosia and nectar—the taste of forever that the gods drank, dripping out of her as he licks and she whimpers. There’s no melody to her moans, but somehow that makes the music that much more potent. Her lips are as soft as a rose’s petal, a flower only he can sing into blooming._

Say that the wind won't change on us

Say that we'll stay with each other

And it will always be like this

_“What’s your dream role?” Her fingers were dancing over his chest, sending sparks across his skin. His sweat was still drying and she was the only thing covering him now. He was too hot for a blanket._

_“My dream role?”_

_“What made you want to act?”_

_It wasn’t a role that made him want to act. He wasn’t sure it ever would be. “Having to pretend to be something my parents and uncle wanted me to be.” He bit it out, self-deprecating because it was easier to be self-deprecating about it than it was to show how much it hurt him. That they loved him on their terms, not his, even now as they grappled to understand why he would want to be an actor; isn’t that terribly untenable as a job, don’t you not get paid enough, you’ll have to work another job too, maybe even two, isn’t it better to have something stable that’ll pay your bills?_

_“What made you decide to, then?” she asked and it was the first time someone had asked him that. Even his parents hadn’t when he’d dropped out of his engineering internship that was supposed to be a fast-track to a job offer when he graduated._

But I only buy what others choose to sell

 _“A door opened,” he shrugged._ You can be every voice inside your head, _Palpatine had smiled at him._ Go on. You can do it. I believe in you, just as I believed in your grandfather.

_“That’s a lie.”_

_“It’s not.”_

_“It is,” she said. “It’s a lie so deep you don’t even know it’s a lie. What’s the truth, Ben?”_

_He swallowed and looked at her. There was still sweat drying between her breasts and he could smell his cum on the bed between them._

_“The truth?” The word rolled over on his tongue. “The truth is that I love you.”_

_And her face softened and her eyes went distant and if she thought he was trying to distract her, he’d never find out because she took his face in her hands and kissed him and sighed and he thought he might just feel tears on his cheeks, though whether they were hers or his, he didn’t know._

—

“You ok, kid?” Lando asked him.

“Huh?”

Bazine was on stage with Snoke, who was luring her, Fates casting the dice. He’d always thought that Snoke was perfectly cast. Not quite as clever as Palpatine, a little rawer, but oh did he have that same seductive power when he wanted to, hypnotic, captivating. _“Think of your career. A few months on tour and then you’ll have put your foot in the door. Or you could end up with nothing and no one and betray your grandfather’s legacy. It’s up to you, of course. But I believe in you, my boy. I see what makes you stand out from the crowd.”_

“You ok? You’re a bit stiff tonight.”

 _Rey might be in the audience,_ he did not say. _I sent her a pair of tickets and told her she’d like the show. She might be here. Maybe she even brought a new boyfriend._

But Lando didn’t know who Rey was, or why Rey would matter more than any Tony viewer at all. 

“I’m fine,” he grunted.

“Get out of your head,” Lando told him.

“Fuck off, will you?”

Lando always smiled when he said that and he smiled now and patted Ben on the shoulder and moved out to the wings again. 

—

_He drove her to her tech week for some stupidly artsy Shakespeare show every day and just hung around the neighborhood, reviewing lines for the next show he was going to be in. He took her grocery shopping and learned that even if Rey ate voraciously whenever he cooked for her or took her out, she pinched pennies more than anyone he knew when it came to the groceries. He took her cat to the vet when she was out of town visiting some friends of Finn’s and the cat sitter was worried about how much BB was vomiting._

_She helped him paint his apartment, something he’d been meaning to do when he moved in, especially because the landlord hadn’t had a security deposit. She helped him run his lines while she took a bath in his bathtub (her apartment only had a shower and she had always wanted to try a bath to see what all the fuss was about; she decided she didn’t like baths but she did like the way he would stare at her in the water and get distracted). She listened to him when he got too drunk and went on tangents about his uncle, about what his parents had tried the last time they’d reached out to talk to him again, about what his mentor was always warning him about when families don’t understand the greater vision of who you want to be._

_They fit together, he thought. Ben had never really ever fit anything in his life, he was too big, too loud, too something, but he and Rey fit together. When she got angry, he’d talk her down; when he got upset, she’d help him remember that he was loved because she loved him. It wasn’t perfect—nothing ever was—but it still fit somehow. And it fit well._

_Fit so well he didn’t really notice when it was he started replying to his mom’s texts, but he did. Fit so well that he wasn’t even concerned when Palpatine began making his overtures._

“Phantom, a touring position. I think you’d be perfect for it.”

_He squeezed Rey’s hand so tightly when his parents walked towards him, smiling. There was always a qualification to their pride, a wish that he’d be something other than he was, the great irony of someone who’d chosen a profession in acting. “It’ll be alright,” she whispered to him so quietly he wondered if he’d been dreaming it. “It’ll be alright. They were the ones who said they wanted to change things, remember?” As if Palpatine hadn’t warned him they were probably lying because he’d seen it before, parents who acted as though acting would be all right but were lying in wait._

_They fit so well that he didn’t really notice that Rey—she was starting to care about his parents too, from the few times they took them out to lunch, or helped her in her back yard with the plants she kept accidentally killing. He didn’t have to notice because they fit, right? He could just assume that everything was going to run smoothly because even when it was rough, it was smooth. That’s what fitting meant, right?_

Brother, what do you care? You'll find another muse somewhere

—

Don’t look. Don’t look when he was running through the audience, begging Eurydice to wait for him. No looking when the lights swung from the ceiling, sending rays of light through the stage smoke. She’d like that. She’d like that. 

_Wait for me, I’m coming. Wait I’m coming with you._

_Please just be here. Please. It was worth it. Isn’t this show beautiful? It was worth it and I can fix the rest now that I don’t have this in my head all the time._

_I can be there._

_I can be._

_Wait for me._

_I needed to be me._

_And I am now._

_So I’m coming._

He could believe it for just a moment, an hour or two—however long he needed to. That if he just willed it enough, if he believed it, she’d come to him. She’d let him come back to her. He needed to believe it, hope was more powerful than any drug Rey had ever smoked. He’d sing it out for everyone in the world to see if it meant that he, like them, could believe that hope too.

Rey would love this scene. She would love the swinging lights, the way they cast shadows through the smoke, the way the lamps seemed to dance around him, dance with him, and he with them as he sang for her—all for her.

If he sings it hard enough, sings it loud enough, then maybe it’ll feel like he isn’t defending what’s already gone.

(The hardest part, most nights, of wiping off his stage makeup was seeing the lies he’d let himself believe, the memories he’d told himself could still be true—and for what?)

_What has become of that man, now that that man is king?_

_What has become of the heart of that man now that he has everything?_

(Maybe he should have played Hades, except he can’t sing that fucking low.)

—

_The night he got the part, he walked six miles. Six miles because he was too excited to stand still and take the train home, too excited to wait for anything at all._

_He and Rey had talked about touring productions before. She’d applied to an assistant lighting designer gig that she’d ultimately been rejected from—not enough experience—that would have taken her through most of the big cities in the country over the course of six months. They’d both agreed—because it had been easy to agree, they fit so well, after all—that they’d be ok. Skype existed, and phones, and texting, and Instagram and all these other ways of keeping in touch. They’d miss each other, yes, but between gigs Ben could fly to wherever she was, and they could have a long couple of days in a hotel room because after a certain point, you get tired of repetitive sightseeing just because you’re in a new place and sex would be the perfect respite._

_They already had the game plan._

_There were sparks in the sky—lightning, or fireworks. Sometimes in summer you couldn’t tell, even if fireworks were definitely illegal. Or maybe they were just figments of his imagination, the sparks of success he willed into existence because he was going to be the Phantom, he was going to be the music of the night. Every night, when he carried Christine in his arms, it would be Rey—Rey who had seen his humanity under the mask, Rey who made him hope that maybe, just maybe he could be happy._

—

And here it was—the breaking every night. He didn’t need to prep his entrance, he didn’t need to do anything. This scene every night—he’d lived it a thousand times in the days since she’d left him. It was every morning when he woke up and remembered _she’s already gone._ Let the old man laugh, victorious, in his face, and let the chorus rough him up and break him down. This was easy as breathing. The blinding bold brightness of the electric city destroying the dreams around him. Rey had always hated light that was too harsh. _It needs to be purposeful._ But this one—he thought she’d like this one. This one was honest, and horrible, and brutal, and stripped everything bare.

_It’s true what they say. You were right._

—

_“Why can’t you be happy for me?”_

_“I am.”_

_“You aren’t acting like it.”_

_“I’m just confused—this feels like it’s out of nowhere.”_

_“I told you about it. This isn’t me trying to leave you behind.”_

_“You didn’t.”_

_“I did.”_

_“When?”_

_“A month ago. That thing Palpatine was starting to talk to me about.”_

_“Yeah but you didn’t say it was a touring production.”_

_“I don’t see how that’s relevant. We had a plan for tours.”_

_“We did, but I thought you were done trying to run away from your problems.”_

_“Run away? I’m not running away from—”_

_“Your parents? You were just starting to talk to them again.”_

_“What do they have to do with any of this?”_

_“I don’t know—every time you come back from talking to Palpatine you get angry at them. Like you think they’re lying to you.”_

_“They’ve been lying to me my whole life.”_

_“Yes but they’re trying to—”_

_“Why are you defending them? What, you think they’re the parents you never had?”_

“I can be the father you never had,” _Palpatine’s voice was silky smooth with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. But Ben didn’t care about that. He didn’t trust smiles anyway. His parents, his uncle—they always smiled._ “Come my boy. Stick with me and your career will be made. I’ll teach you lessons you’ll never learn in a traditional acting class. You’ll stand out from all the sheep. You’ll be remarkable.”

_(It got bad after that. He shouted, she shouted back. He tried not to remember what he said to her as they both cried, their faces red and scrunched, neither yielding, because they fit, right? Except when they didn’t?)_

_“I don’t understand why you can’t be happy for me! This is a big deal! Why do you have to be like_ them. _”_

_“Ben, don’t go this way.”_

_He had snapped the door shut on her anyway._

—

Bazine smiled at him. She never smiled, but she smiled at him, which was how he knew that he wasn’t as stiff as he was in the first act anymore. His heart was hammering in his chest and it was like he had just slammed the door on Rey all over again.

_You’re opening a door again. Trying. Don’t lose hope. Not yet._

God he wanted to look.

He knew where the seat was. He’d picked it purposefully so that he could check and see if there was a body there, to see if she’d come. _She’s there._

_No she’s not._

_She’s there._

_No she’s not._

_Men are fools, Oh, men are frail_

_Give them the rope and they'll hang themselves_

He couldn’t look yet. He couldn’t lose hope right before the last song. He had to still have hope. He still had to feel like Ben, like Orpheus, who could make you see how the world could be, in spite of the way that it was. If he gave that up for a second, let that hope have a chance of flickering and dying, he became a shadow, a shade, a mask, a phantom.

—

_He called her every day when he was on tour. Every day, but spoke only to her voicemail._

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“Rey, please listen to me.”_

_“I miss you.”_

_“Please come visit, I’ll explain.”_

_“I’m not running away.”_

_“I shouldn’t have left. I never wanted to leave you behind.”_

_He drank. He drank a lot. He drank so much he called his mom and couldn’t remember the conversation but she showed up in Nashville with a pitying expression and tried to convince him to quit the gig. “_ If Rey means that much to you…”

_He didn’t call her again. He pulled away. Floating, falling, sweet intoxication. He was told he did well, but he didn’t remember half the shows. He couldn’t even remember the name of the girl who played Christine the night he was so drunk he vomited during intermission and his voice was raspy and monstrous during the second half. Everyone said it was his best show. He didn’t care._

_Because it turned out he didn’t want anything anymore. He just wanted—_

Come home with me

(Who are you?)

The man who’s gonna marry you

_Poe slid him a script though. “Just try it man, you’re miserable.” Poe was someone he’d met through Rey, someone who wanted to be a stage manager. How they’d ended up on the same circuit was something like fate. He didn’t know._

_He auditioned over video, though, then quit when he got the gig and moved to a city he’d never lived in before in his life because this—this was a good show._

_This was the show that would bring her back to him._

_It had to be._

_It had to be._

_And he felt like himself again._

—

It was easy to turn around when he did. It was the easiest time he’d ever done it because he needed to know if she was there. But the spotlight was too bright and he couldn’t see anything except Bazine crying as the stage hatch lowered her back down to hell, and the blackness that followed was a darker one than ever he’d known because he was supposed to be able to see her.

Instead he took himself off stage and rubbed his eyes. He went backstage and stared at the mirror. He looked like a ghost. _She’s not there. She’s not. She’s not there._

His head was rioting and he grabbed the baby wipes to rub the dirt from the second act off his face and grabbed the apron he needed to put on for the final scene. He was supposed to come back out onstage in just a second, to look like he was falling in love but the phantoms in his mind weren’t going away, they weren’t going away.

 _She’s there,_ he tried to tell himself over and over and over again. 

“It’s a sad song,” he heard the chorus singing, Lando crooning over them about how we sing it anyway. 

_I’m already gone._

He took a long slow breath. “ _Accept it, Ben,”_ his mother had told him in Nashville. _“She’s gone. You need to get yourself together.”_

There might be someone else one day. Someone, but no one like Rey.

_The darkest hour_

“Ben,” hissed Mitaka and he realized he was about to miss his entrance. The last moment of the show. He didn’t have time to think, or to kick the mess of sadness, loneliness, hopelessness out of his heart as he darted into the wings just in time for the music to slow and for him to step out again.

_Of the darkest night_

And his eyes landed on Bazine before lifting slightly above her to the seat just in view. This time the lights weren’t too bright. 

_Comes right before the dawn_

This time he saw a silhouette he’d recognize anywhere and his head and heart spark and he felt himself inflating, like he could believe in something again, like there was a whole world of opportunity because Rey had come again. She’d come back to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to lilibethsonar for filling this lovely commission for the piece! As much of a sequel as I can possibly allow myself here:
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! You can find me [here](http://linktr.ee/crossingwinter)!


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